Impact (9 page)

Hancock maintains heading.

Pinback rides the throttles, monitors airspeed.

Couple of minutes from target Pinback radios Vegas for permission to deploy. He gets the Go. Hancock and Frost formally concur. They hand their authentication codes to Noble. He keys the digit sequence into the weapons console and arms the device.

Cue for Frost to unzip her breast pocket, take out a stopwatch and call the sixty second count.

Twenty seconds to target: low rumble/thud as the bomb bay doors fold open and lock.

Pinback issues the final command: proceed with launch sequence.

Countdown from ten.

Noble reaches for the overhead Special Weapons panel, lifts switch covers and hits WPN REL.

Clamps retract and the ALCM drops from the payload compartment. Solid fuel boosters fire, fins unfold, and the missile begins its journey to the target site. Warhead: a Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke dialled for a ten kiloton yield.

The plane banks and enters a holding pattern. Standoff until detonation.

They drop blast screens and wait. Minutes pass.

Pinback:

‘Brace, brace, brace.’

A shuddering shockwave buffets the aircraft. Noble unbuckles, crouches between the pilot seats with his camera, and lifts one of the blast screens. He and the pilots are bathed in the unholy light of a slow unfurling mushroom cloud.

The crew had sat in the plane while it was hangared at McCarran and drilled the procedure until it was instinctual. Everyone knew their part.

But then the centre console flashed ENGINE FIRE. An ominous moment that seemed to signal bifurcating reality. One timeline in which the plane completed its mission and returned to base. Another in which Frost found herself marooned among wreckage.

Frost set the camera on the avionics console and pressed REC.

‘LaNitra Frost, Lieutenant, Second Bomb Wing. Radar nav aboard
Liberty Bell
MT66.

‘We crashed in the desert a few hours ago. Lieutenant Guthrie and Captain Pinback are both KIA. Noble, Hancock and Early are missing. As far as I can ascertain, I am the sole survivor.

‘Sun is about to set. Must be twenty-one-hundred, or thereabouts.’

She could see her own face in the camera’s little playback screen. Sunburn. Cracked lips. Crazy, sand-dusted hair. Looked like the kind of raddled meth casualty you might see shaking a cup on a street corner. She reangled the screen so she didn’t have to look at herself.

‘I spoke with Captain Pinback prior to his death. It was his supposition that the explosion of engine two triggered a sequence of systems failures which, in turn, caused the plane to lose airspeed and stall. There will be no investigation, no forensic examination of debris, so I guess we’ll never know for sure.

‘Pinback sent a bunch of distress calls before the crash. There are multiple locator beacons broadcasting from this site. The plane, the missile, the ejector seats are all transmitting a homing signal. Hopefully the guys at Vegas will scramble their chopper and pick me up.’

She wiped her brow.

‘It’s hot. Too damned hot. Truth be told, it’s been a long fucking day. Guess there’s nothing I can do but sit tight and wait for rescue.’

She pressed OFF.

She turned in the pilot seat and looked over her shoulder.

Pinback lying dead on the flight-deck floor. An Arctic parka draped over his face. Frost could see the outline of his head.

The mystery of death. Hard to believe there was no longer a person under the coat. Speaking to the guy a moment ago. Injured but animated. Strong voice. An entire universe behind those eyes. Now her friend and Captain was a cooling slab of meat. Mind and memory dissipated the moment his heart stopped beating.

Better move the body. She didn’t want to share the cabin with a putrefying corpse. It wouldn’t be long before he started to stink.

She grabbed his feet and dragged him to the ladder way. She gripped his wrists and lowered him through the hatch. He hung for a moment, feet brushing the deck of the lower cabin, standing upright one last time. Then Frost released her grip and he fell dead-weight to the floor.

She slid down the ladder and stood next to the grotesquely sprawled corpse. Ought to feel bad about throwing the dead man around, think of it as brutal desecration, but that kind of sentiment died months back with the rest of the human race.

She dragged him outside, hauled him through the rip in the cabin wall, flight suit shredded on torn metal.

Pinback laid out on the sand. Lips parted, eyes closed, face already mortuary white.

She placed his hands across his chest, wrapped a parka round his legs. She fetched the flag from the locker, a cheap Walmart stars and stripes evidently used as a dust cover for the avionics. She tucked it round his upper body like she was saying goodnight. His head shrouded in stars.

Sunset. Pale azure. Delicious evening cool. Day heat already evaporating into a cloudless sky as the earth turned and put her on the dark side.

Frost climbed a high dune in front of the plane.

She sat awhile and massaged her leg, glad to be away from the stink of aviation fuel and burned cable insulation.

She powered up her CSEL and extended the antenna.

‘Mayday, Mayday, this is Lieutenant LaNitra Frost, United States Air Force, requesting urgent assistance, over.’

Nothing.

‘Can anyone hear me, over? Air Force personnel hailing all channels, please respond. Does anyone copy this transmission?’

Nothing.

‘If anyone, anywhere, can hear my voice, please answer.’

The backlit screen: NO COMMS.

She shut off the radio.

A rippling ocean of silica. Pale dune crests, deep wells of shadow.

She could see tracks in the sand, the trail left as she crossed the desert and approached the plane. The footprints had begun to soften and blur. In a couple of days, all trace of her passage would be erased.

Skin-crawling unease. She pictured herself dead of thirst. A desiccated corpse consumed by the desert. Nothing left but bleached bone next to a corroded fuselage. A few tattered scraps of flight suit. A couple of wind-scoured dog tags. A sand-filled skull.

She had never felt so small, so utterly alone.

She pressed REC.

‘Night is falling. Couldn’t raise anyone on the CSEL. Hoped a change in atmospherics might extend the range, but I guess not. Half remembered something they taught us during Basic: high frequency analogue signals are less likely to be absorbed by the ionosphere at night. Doesn’t seem to have made much difference, though. Haven’t reached a soul.

‘The plane itself has several communications systems, but none of them are operational. The power is out. Reckon that’s my next job, once I’ve grabbed a little rest. See if there’s life in the aft batteries. Coax a little juice to the flight deck, fire up the UHF and TACAN.

‘Truth be told, I’m scared to try. What if I can’t re-route the power? What if the batteries are dead?

‘Worse still: what if I restore current to the deck systems, broadcast on every channel, and get no reply? Thing of it is, Guthrie was infected. Must have been sick before he got on the plane. Can’t blame the guy for covering his illness. He was scared. If he’d sought help, told anyone at Vegas he was infected, they would have shot him in the head where he stood. But when did he get bit? The virus must have breached the wire. Someone brought it inside the airport compound. Maybe one of Trenchman’s boys got tagged during a supply run. Brought it home and spread infection across the base. Bunch of guys convinced searchlights and perimeter guns were keeping them safe. But the virus was already inside the garrison, picking them off one by one. Maybe we got out just in time. Maybe they are all dead.

‘That’s what I have to face. There’s a very real possibility that the last military installation in this time zone has been wiped out.

‘So what if I’m marooned in this god-forsaken place? That’s the question I’ve been trying to avoid. I’ll send out regular distress calls. But what if help doesn’t come?’

Frost lay in the sand and looked up at the stars. Constellations emerged from the darkening sky. Cassiopeia. Pegasus. Andromeda.

She enjoyed the evening cool. A sensual, skin-prickle chill.

She switched on her flashlight a while and let the beam shine upwards into the sky. No moths or mosquitoes dancing in the beam, batting the lamp. No insects of any kind. Implication: no water for miles.

A distant shout.

‘Hey.’

Frost struggled to sit upright.

A silhouette at the top of a high dune. A guy in a flight suit.

He fell. He tumbled in a cascade of dust.

Frost scrambled to her feet and limped towards the prone figure.

Hancock. Head bandaged with blood-blackened chute fabric.

She knelt beside him.

He fumbled at a pocket of his survival vest. She gently pushed his hands away, extracted a water sachet and tore the corner tab. She lifted his head and held the pouch to his lips.

He sucked the pouch dry. Feverish thirst.

‘Another?’

He nodded.

She tore the tab and watched him gulp a second pouch.

He lay back, panting.

‘More water on the plane, right?’ he asked.

‘Some.’

‘Anyone else make it?’

‘Pinback and Guthrie are dead for sure. No sign of the others. Poor bastards must be out in the desert. I’ll start a fire at first light. Put up more smoke. Maybe they’ll see it.’

Hancock held up his CSEL.

‘Couldn’t raise anyone. Not a living soul.’

‘The airwaves are stone dead.’

‘Thought my radio might be damaged.’

Frost shook her head.

‘There’s no one to raise. It’s as if the whole hemisphere has gone dark.’

‘Still,’ he said. ‘Glad you made it, Frosty.’

He held out a hand. They shook.

Frost gestured to his injured head.

‘Want me to patch you up, sir?’

‘Been walking all day. I’m beyond tired. Let me rest a while.’

‘Looks like you took a substantial knock.’

‘Woke up minus an eye.’

‘Lost some blood, by the looks.’

He nodded. He gestured to his scalp.

‘Itches like I-don’t-know-what. Hard to stop myself scratching the wound right open. Torment. How about you? You okay?’

‘Messed up my leg.’

He checked out the splint.

‘You can walk. You can put a little weight on it. So I guess it can’t be bust.’

‘Morphine dulls the pain. Not sure if that’s good or bad. Might encourage me to exacerbate the injury.’

‘You’ll be okay.’

‘Does your head hurt?’

‘It’s like my migraine has a migraine. Can’t hardly see straight. A thousand drills boring into my skull.’

‘There’s a trauma kit aboard the plane. Plenty of dope. I’ll fix you up. Get you high as a Georgia pine.’

He shook his head.

‘Pinback is dead, is that right? Then I guess that makes me AC. Better keep a clear head. Responsibilities. There’s a whole new day tomorrow and it ain’t been touched yet. Plenty to do.’

‘Maybe you ought to take a shot. Help you concentrate on the tasks at hand.’

‘No.’

‘With respect, being AC doesn’t mean a whole lot right now. The mission is over, sir. Not much to be done. Just got to sit tight and wait for rescue.’

Hancock started to get to his feet. He looked resolute, like he was ready to take charge and issue orders. Then his strength gave out and he fell on his back.

‘Seriously, sir. You’re played out. Better rest a while.’

They lay and looked up at the brilliant starfield.

‘No planes,’ said Hancock. ‘A dozen flight paths used to intersect over this desert. Few months ago we would have see contrails, running lights.’

‘We ought to concentrate on our immediate situation.’

‘A silent planet. Nothing moving on the highways. No ships at sea. Imagine the cities. New York. LA. The stillness. The silence.’

Long pause.

‘What if we’re the last people on Earth? If Vegas got wiped out, if the airwaves are dead, maybe there is no one else but us. End of the species. Could be us. Right here, right now.’

‘You want to procreate, is that what you’re saying?’

Hancock smiled.

‘Appreciate the offer, but right now I barely have enough energy to blink.’

They lay in silence a while.

‘Thought I was going to die out there, Frost. Die among the dunes. Thought my end had come.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’

‘Least we survived, right?’

She nodded.

‘Yeah,’ said Hancock. ‘Least we survived.’